Weirdcrawl: Outsiders

In my previous post about making a Weirdcrawl I posted guidelines I had derived from H.P Lovecrafts notes on writing weird fiction about creating or evoking a sense of the weird. One of them was The players should venture from the weird into the normal.

One such way I think this could manifest, and help convey the tone of a setting, is through having the Player Characters be outsiders to the societies they find themselves in. Partially because if they weren't outsiders, they'd probably be content just remaining in normal society and never venturing into the weird. Their outsider status serves as motivation for them to adventure and adventuring marks them as an outsider as they have less and less to relate to in normal society. While they are not exceptional ability compared to your average person, they are a bit exceptional in motivation being Outsiders.

I think there are two ways they can be Outsiders.

The first is in an external manner such as being from a foreign place where through their appearance, customs, and lack of social connections, they don't belong to the society they find themselves in. This is a fairly common trope in a lot of TTRPGs, especially those that focus on exploration. By having the players come from a far away, generally more civilized place, it makes it easier to explain why they know so little of the new lands around them and why everything is strange and full of wilderness when they explore.

The second way I think player characters can be Outsiders is internally. This is something that is seen in fiction a lot where the character feels alienated to their own nature and feels driven by some part of themselves that they don't completely understand. Internal motivation is typically represented in TTRPGs as some kind of drive.

Furthermore, these two things, external and internal alienation could feed into each other. Where the characters could come from societies that tend to engender people who feel alienated from the time/place they are living in or societies that are undergoing massive change and some form of collapse where everything feels like it's falling apart socially and spiritually.

At first I was thinking of making the setting a bit more generic fantasy but then thought that the whole idea of a campaign centered around exploring the weird, combined with the PCs as outsiders got me thinking of H.P Lovecrafts Dreamland stories where people come from the real world. But instead of coming from 1920's America, come from different historical times, from socities as described above. Where the characters feel trapped, where the external and internal alienation feed into each other and the person seeks to escape, and so does into a Dreamlands like setting that is full of exploration and weird things.

In any case, in accordance with general OSR philosophy I believe that the simpler these two things, internal and external alienation, can determined the better and that a random generation chart can be used for each during character creation.

What society are you from?

Roll 1d4

1. Japan: The Floating World (Ukiyo) (1615-1868): For a long time there was peace. So long that the noble Samurai trained less and less for war, taking up more artistic or meditative pursuits in their leisure. More and more ceremonial they idealized a warrior past they could never participate in. As the cities grew larger, as the streets filled with people, the lowly merchants grew rich and yet, eyes downcast, only ever selling the goods of others, could never hope to attain the honor the listless Samurai has. All the while the whores and entertainers watch from the doorways and windows like silent beggars. Beads upon a string, each exists in a stratified society that claims all those no matter their position. Yet when the night is dark and the moon full, in the entertainment districts they can all be found, all coming together: the angst-ridden Samurai, the lowly merchants, the artisans, entertainers, and prostitutes. All of them mingling freely where they can like nowhere else, all feeling their lives meaningless and unchanging underneath the light of the moon; all partaking in earthly pleasures while waiting to pass onto the next. It is Ukiyo, The Floating World. 
2. Rome: The Fall of Rome (375 - 476) From the fog of antiquity arose the City of Seven Hills, the seat of an Empire that stretches the known world from Africa in the south to Britain in the north to Spain in the west and Armenia in the east. From the four corners of the earth come all peoples and all the riches to fill its markets like flocks of birds their calls echo in the squares.  It lies in ruins now, sacked by the very barbarians who once served in its army. Wealthy patricians fleeing to the countryside protecting their grand estates filled with slaves and soldiers. Roman civic virtue slowly strangulated by the entangling Christian vine. Corruption reigns as the skies darken and black storm looms. Egomaniac emperors haunt hallowed halls as the slide to ruin begins, as the golden eagle of Rome lies tarnished. The center cannot hold, the giant falters, soon an age of ignorance and darkness begins. 
3. Europe: End of the Century (Fin de siècle) (1880-1890): Streets lined with electric lights instead of gas lamps, noiseless carriages in a multitude of fashionable forms, the telegraph bringing the world closer together; poised on the edge of a new century, Europe sits decadent, eyes-wide. The bourgeois, filled with ever more pathological self-absorption, are delighted only by the perverse, hedonistic pleasure hidden behind a refined air. While, lost amid incoherent mysticism, unable to tell imbecility from genius, artists and thinkers pursue beauty for beauty's sake as they drown in their own reflection. Disillusioned by the truth offered by natural world, rational thought, and ordinary society, the working class who are neither aristocrats nor bored bourgeoisie toil in factories. They are the urban poor living in decrepit neighborhoods far from the rich. The world explored, all frontiers extinguished, the slow march of regression begins, society slowly destroying all its prior achievements, sinking into degenerate crisis finding pleasure only in it's apathy, it's self disgust, its wanton self-destruction. 
4. Mayan: Collapse of the Classic Mayan Civilization (800-900): for years the altars of the gods have run red with the blood of sacrifices but now they remain dry. The rains refuse to come and the land lies locked in drought. Long have the lands been hacked and burnt to grow beans and maize, wood used to boil the lime plaster from which the pyramids grow high. From the jungle arose many mighty cities with tall step-pyramids, elaborately carved stela telling their history. Soon they shall be empty for the astronomer priests have no answers and the stone gods remain silent. Abandoned to the jungle which slowly swallows them the roar of the jaguar is heard. To it soon all will return. 

What is your drive?

1d20	Trait
1	Reckless: they feel they have no limits, always pushing, impulsively getting into dangerous situations. They enjoy the adrenaline rush, momentary feeling of being truly alive. To bad it is gone in a flash.
2	Refined: above the toils of the world and its oh so common folk they see themselves. Not of this world, of refined tastes, seeking only beauty in the outre they long to live a decadent life, entombing themselves in bejeweled sarcophagus.
3	Curious: upon the advances of the past we unfurl the future. Knowledge, always comes with a price, a price they are always willing to pay for it is the only true eternal.
4	Addicted: be it hashish, opium, or alcohol, or some far stranger drug they are addicted. They had a life, long ago, remembered now only through the haze. Their sober hours have become the dream and their hallucinations the truer reality.
5	Arrogant: feels special or important, feels they are predestined for greater glory. They have always known it, others don't understand what they have seen. Others always miss what they see.
6	Misanthropic: has an intense disinterest in people, the world is filled with only the very worst. They are a well, water still but running deep. The only beauty to be found is in nature, in solitude.
7	Unyielding: all their life they have fought them, time and time again. Every one of them seeking to just enforce another set of rules, brave only while they have the authority. The universe is full of either masters or slaves and they are determined to be the true master of themselves.
8	Weary: they have had a long life and are tired beyond measure. Going through the motions, they live out each day as it all winds down. They feel their best years are behind them but subconsciously seek to give it one last hurrah, to go out in a blaze!
9	Romantic: all their life they have wished to be swept away, to be carried off by the unreal, the fantastic. By the things they dream in the dead of night and longer days. The real world is but a dull purgatory, but a shadow of the real world they yearn to slip into.
10	Faithless: they have always followed some religion or mysticism. It gave their life community and ritual. But it became broken, rod snapped in two. Now they don't know what to do with their life, drifting aimlessly, they seek to find something greater.
11	Suspicious: for as long as humanity has lived, the truth has been hidden from them. Layers upon layers, there is always a deeper truth, a deeper understanding, a deeper revelation, as mask to pull, a face to reveal.
12	Spurned: be it attempts at love or entrance into high society, they have been repeatedly spurned and rejected. Now they hold an inner bitterness that never fades. One day they shall prove them all wrong!
13	Mournful: someone very close to them has died, a friend, a lover. It cast a black pall over their life. All love has left the world. Unable to take their own life, they know not why they continue to live. To honor the memory of the deceased? To bring them back? To die in some unknown way?
14	Reaver: there exist real monsters, they know, for they are one. Never had a problem with casual violence. Preying upon weakness, they have always drifted from one place to another, taking what they wanted with a smirk, leaving when things get too hot.
15	Survivor: they were the lone survivor. It haunts them still. They feel guilty, can't sleep, can't return to normal life. They view themselves as responsible. They will right some wrong or...perhaps...die trying.
16	Guilty: in injustice after injustice, in insult after insult, it grew within them. The grudge. Slowly but surely, they planned it out, they took their time, they thought they could commit the perfect crime. They were clever, so clever they got away with it. They don't think it eats away at them, day by day, but it does.
17	Dishonored: they have brought down great shame upon their family be it because of love, money, or failed ambition. Cast out, no home, no kin, no company, no friend, they are but a ghost, no worst than a ghost, for they still live.
18	Sensitive: they have always had an artists sensitivity. In the dead of night as the moon hangs high, in the middle of day as the sun dapples the sand, on the windy ocean and in forest glen. To the most beautiful, to the most faraway, they find themselves called.
19	Obsessive: it began as a hobby but over the years soon became something else. They obsessively collect the great things of the past. No one understands their interest, no one understands their need.
20	Nostalgic:days filled with endless imaginings of life long ago, of a society and culture that is dead and all but vanished but calls to them stronger than their own. They long for the glory of an ancient past that they can never join.